that a king has fome fort of intereft in giving uneafinefs to his fubjects: that all who are pleafing to them, are to be of course disagreeable to him: that as foon as the perfons who are odious at court are known to be odious to the people, it is fnatched at as a lucky occafion of fhowering down upon them all kinds of emoluments and honours. None are confidered as well-wifhers to the crown, but thofe who advife to fome unpopular courfe of action none capable of ferving it, but those who are obliged to call at every inftant upon all its power for the fafety of their lives. None are fuppofed to be fit priests in the temple of government, but the perfons who are compelled to fly into it for fanctuary. Such is the effect of this refined project; fuch is ever the -refult of all the contrivances which are ufed to free men from the fervitude of their reason, and from the neceffity of ordering their affairs according to their evident interefts. Thefe contrivances oblige them to run into a real and ruinous fervitude, in order to avoid a fuppofed reftraint that might be attended with advantage.

;

If, therefore, this fyftem has fo ill answered its own grand pretence of faving the king from the neceffity of employing perfons difagreeable to him, has it given more peace and tranquillity to his majefty's private hours? No, moft certainly. The father of his people cannot poffibly enjoy repofe, while his family is in fuch a state of distraction, Then what has the crown or the king profitted by all this fine-wrought fcheme? Is he more rich, or more fplendid, or more powerful, or more at his eafe, by fo many labours and contrivances? Have they not beggared his exchequer, tarnifhed the fplendour of his court, funk his dignity, galled his feelings, difcompofed the whole order and happiness of 2 his private life.-Thoughts on the Caufe of the prefent Difcontents.

MATERNAL INDULGENCE.

THE authority of a father, fo ufeful to our wellbeing, and fo juftly venerable upon all accounts, hinders us from having that entire love for him that we have for our mothers, where the parental authority is almoft melted down into the mother's fondnefs and indulgence. But we generally have a great love for our grandfathers, in whom this authority is removed a degree from us, and where the weaknefs of age mellows it into fomething of a feminine partiality. Sublime and Beautiful.

MUSIC.

THE beautiful in mufic will not bear that loudnefs and ftrength of founds, which may be used to raise other paffions; nor notes, which are thrill or harsh, or deep; it agrees beft with fuch as are clear, even, fmooth, and weak. The fecond is, that great variety and quick tranfitions from one measure or tone to another, are contrary to the genius of the beautiful in mufic. Such tranfitions often excite mirth, or other fudden and tumultuous paffions; but not that finking, that melting, that languor, which is the cha racteristical effect of the beautiful as it regards every fenfe. The paffion excited by beauty, is, in fact, nearer to a fpecies of a melancholy, than to jolity and mirth. I do not here mean to confine mufic to any one fpecies of notes, or tones, neither is it an art in which I can fay I have any great fkill. My fole defign in this remark is, to fettle a confiftent idea of beauty. The infinite variety of the affections of the foul will fuggeft to a good head, and fkilful ear, a variety of fuch founds as are fitted to raise them.Ibid.

* I ne'er am merry, when I hear sweet music.

MANNERS.

MANNERS are of more importance than laws. In a great measure the laws depend upon them. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or footh, corrupt or purify, exalt or debafe, barbarize or refine us, by a. conftant, fteady, uniform, infenfible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they fupply them, or they totally destroy them. Of this the new French Legiflators were aware; therefore, with the fame method, and under the fame authority, they fettled a fyftem of manners, the moft licentious, proftitute, and abandoned, and, at the fame time, the most coarse, rude, savage, and ferocious. Nothing in the Revolution, no, not to a phrase or a gesture, not to the fashion of a hat or a fhoe, was left to accident. All was the refult of defign; all was matter of inftitution. No mechanical means could be devised in favour of this incredible fyftem of wickednefs and vice, that has not been employed. The nobleft

paffions, the love of glory, the love of country, were debauched into means of it's prefervation and it's propagation. All forts of fhews and exhibitions calculated to inflame and vitiate the imagination, and pervert the moral fenfe, have been contrived. They have fometimes brought forth five or fix hundred drunken women, calling at the bar of the Affembly for the blood of their own children, as being royalifts or conftitutionals. Sometimes they have got a body of wretches, calling themfelves fathers, to demand the murder of their fons; boafting that Rome had but one Brutus, but that they could fhew five hundred. There were inftances, in which they inverted, and retaliated the impiety, and produced fons, who called for the execution of their parents. The foundation of their republic is founded in moral

paradoxes. Their patriotifm is always prodigy. All thofe inftances to be found in hiftory, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public fpirit, at which morality is perplexed, reafon is ftaggered, and from which a frighted nature recoils, are their chofen, and almost fole examples for the inftruction of their youth.-Regicide Peace.

MANNERS (MODERN.)

THE royal household has been carried away by the refiftlefs tide of manners: but with this very material difference; private men have got rid of the establishments along with the reafons of them; whereas the royal household has loft all that was ftately and venerable in the antique manners, without retrenching any thing of the cumbrous charge of a Gothic establishment. It is fhrunk into the polished littleness of modern elegance and perfonal accommodation; it has evaporated from the grofs concrete, into an effence and rectified fpirit of expence, where you have tuns of antient pomp in a vial of modern luxury.-Oecon. Reform.

MARRIAGE.

OTHER Legislators, knowing that marriage is the origin of all relations, and confequently the first element of all duties, have endeavoured, by every art, to make it facred. The Chriftian religion, by confining it to the pairs, and by rendering that relation indiffoluble, has, by these two things, done more towards the peace, happiness, fettlement, and civilization of the world, than by any other part in this whole fcheme of Divine Wifdom. The direct con trary course was taken in the Synagogue of Antichrift, I mean in that forge and manufactory of all

evil, the fect which predominated in the Conftituent Affembly of 1789. Those monsters employed the fame, or greater induftry, to defecrate and degrade that State, which other Legiflators have ufed to render it holy and honourable. By a ftrange, uncalled for declaration, they pronounced, that marriage was no better than a common, civil contract. It was one of their ordinary tricks, to put their fentiments into the mouths of certain perfonated characters, which they theatrically exhibited at the bar of what ought to be a serious Affembly. One of thefe was brought out in the figure of a prostitute, whom they called by the affected name of " a mother without being a wife." This creature they made to call for a repeal of the incapacities, which in civilized States are put upon baftards. The proftitutes of the Affembly gave to this their puppet, the fanction of their greater impudence. In confequence of the principles laid down, and the manners authorised, baftards were not long after put on the footing of the iffue of lawful unions. Proceeding in the fpirit of the first authors of their conftitution, they went the full length of the principle, and gave a licence to divorce at the mere pleasure of either party, and at four day's notice. With them the matrimonial connexion was brought into fo degrading a state of concubinage, that, I believe, none of the wretches in London, who keep warehoufes of infamy, would give out one of their victims to private custody on fo fhort and infolent a tenure. There was, indeed, a kind of profligate equity in thus giving to women the fame licentious power. The reafon they affigned was as infamous as the act, declaring that women had been too long under the tyranny of parents and of husbands. It is not neceffary to obferve upon the horrible confequences of taking one half of the fpecies wholly out of the guardianfhip and protection of the other, Regicide Peace.